CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Cyril stood on the ground answering her questions.

She had rubbed a handkerchief over her face and now she was sitting up, tilting her face to him, making believe she was inquiring what the arrangements were that he had made. He was compelled, pressed into the part, although he knew it was all pretense, this absorbed conversation. It was an excuse for them not to go yet, but to wait until he came.

He was coming.

Cyril could see with his eye’s corner young Fred Davies standing, like a footman, by Will Pascoe’s car. Will was like a chauffeur, waiting. The whole equipage waited for Henry Duncane, who must first come walking this way.

She turned, gracefully and naturally, and she opened her lovely eyes as if she would let him read to the bottom of her soul.

“I’m sorry about this,” he began, with the identical phrase as before. He looked ill. “They did all they could.”

She murmured, “Ah, Henry, I know that.” Cyril thought, she turned herself on like a light bulb. She sets the current flowing. His knuckles dug into his own side.

“You’ll be alone now,” said Henry Duncane.

“Alone,” she agreed, flutingly said. But she put her hand on the car’s edge, where his already was, and kept offering him the depth of her eyes.

“Will you tell me one thing?”

She blinked.

“Had you told him?”

“Told him what?” She didn’t know what he meant exactly. “About … us?” she said.

Cyril shuddered and cast his eyes down.

Henry said, precisely, “Had you told him that you wanted a divorce?”

Her head trembled a negative.

Henry put his left palm to his cheek and pushed the flesh. “I’m glad of that, I suppose.” He looked at her piercingly. “Did you change your mind?”

“Ah, no … I hadn’t … couldn’t … never can …” Her dark head went bending and she was swaying a little closer.

“Don’t …” she said, and her face came up, “don’t let this come between …”

(Words, hideous enough, whispered in close darkness, now said aloud in the light of morning. Cyril felt sick.)

Henry stepped back. “There’s no contract, Mrs. Cole, between you and me.” The voice was clear and cold and there was no possible way to misunderstand one syllable of what it was saying. The light, or whatever it was, the magnetism in Madeline flickered.

“I want you to understand that,” Henry said crisply, “and I don’t mind a witness.”

“I understand. I know. You can’t.”

“Not that I can’t,” said Henry brutally. “I don’t want to.”

Cyril heard his own thin angry snarl, “Don’t worry, Duncane. My sister and I will be leaving this town.”

Duncane said quietly, “Good idea. It may be easier for her somewhere else.”

He turned his back to walk away.

Madeline said in a broken murmur, “I can’t help it if Arthur died. I didn’t do it.” She began to cry.

Cyril was seething. He darted around the car’s nose. There were not many people around, almost none now. He dared catch at Henry Duncane. He said fiercely, “I don’t know what was going on but I’m going to know. Duncane, what d’you mean about a contract?”

Henry eyed him steadily. “You want me to tell you what I meant?” His cold eyes bore down.

“I insist on your telling me.” Cyril was wild. “If that was a dirty crack you took at my sister …”

“No crack,” said Henry, distantly.

“Then what was it? What have you been promising?”

“Exactly nothing. That’s what I say.”

“I don’t like the insulting way you say it.”

Henry said icily, “Let go.”

“What d’you mean, easier for her? You stuck-up …” Cyril didn’t understand what had got into him to be breaking all the rules he lived by. “… simple-minded prig!” he finished furiously.

“Maybe,” said Henry dangerously, “I’d better tell you what I was thinking. In my simple-minded way. She sees life and death for somebody else in terms of herself. And there’s something in that that’s like an animal. Now I have insulted her. Well?”

Cyril took a step back. His thin cheeks burned. “You’re wrong. You don’t know the facts.”

This held Henry listening.

“She would have stayed,” said Cyril. “I was the one who dragged her away. I still think I was wise. But you can’t blame her for what I chose to do. And no insults of any kind are necessary.” Cyril looked as haughty as he could. “Good-by to you, Duncane.”

“Stayed where?” said Henry.

“With you, last night.”

“Last night? When?”

“When your car turned …”

“Then?” said Henry in pure surprise. “Was she there?”

Cyril’s face flamed and his tongue stung. “What … what do you mean, then? I thought you meant your life. We knew, you see … we knew you’d be found. It wasn’t …” He had never been more uncomfortable in all his life.

Henry said, distantly, his eyes on the hills, “Was I the only one thinking about Arthur Cole?”

When his eyes came to Cyril’s, Cyril’s fell. “She was in a spot,” he muttered. “You have to allow …”

Henry’s voice slashed into that muttering confusion. “I think good-by will cover everything,” he said sadly. He walked away.

Fred Davies fretted on the way down the hill. “I should have seen to it that you got out of there a lot sooner. You feel all right?”

“All right. Sure.”

“You don’t look it. Say, how did that happen?”

“This? Skid. Windshield. Glass.”

“Pretty slippery last night,” called Pascoe over his shoulder. “Bad night.”

“I thought I had to avoid something in the road.”

“Tried to stop, eh? What was it? Dog?”

“Don’t know what it was. Lot I’ll never know.”

The men did not seek to pry into Henry’s mood of sad humility. “Say,” Fred thought he changed the subject, “mean to ask you. What was eating Varker, back there?”

“Thought I insulted his sister.”

Fred was silent a moment. “Well …” he began and stopped. The muscles of Henry’s jaw moved. He had a bad taste in his mouth. Had talked too much. Been womanish. He wished he had kept to a simple good-by.

Fred said, mildly, “They’re a pair.”

The car waltzed around the corner.

“Thanks, Pascoe. Thanks a lot, Fred.” Henry got out and drew, a little reluctantly, away from the men.

He was still wearing his coat like a cape, sleeves dangling, which was unlike him, and Libby thought she had never seen him look so wretchedly tired. He said, almost nervously, “You look fine. Sorry I had to be away so long. The whole night, as it turned out.”

“Henry, I sent a wire to mother.”

“I should have done that,” he said, guiltily. “Sorry.”

His air of nervous melancholy disturbed her. “I slept,” she said. “Henry, I know, you must feel sad.”

“Sad?” He straightened his back.

“For those four men. And their families.” His eyes flickered as if she surprised him. “I suppose the whole town feels sad,” she went on.

“Yes. Although they got the one out. And it’s over.” He sat down on the bed.

“You look awful. Can you sleep now?”

“I think so.” His head moved as if to lead his weary body.

She said clearly, “What will Madeline Cole do, Henry?”

He turned his face. “She’s leaving town.”

“Oh, did you speak to her?” The lace that fell so daintily and frivolously along her throat was quivering.

“I said good-by.”.

“Henry, did you and she …”—stillness fell over him—“… meet under Celestina’s window?”

He said, too weary and sad to play any unnatural game of evasion, “Yes, Libby. And once or twice before.”

“She is in love with you?”

“Said so.” He rubbed his face. “I don’t know.”

“You’ll have to tell me more about it, Henry.” Her voice was calm.

Henry said, blindly, “Whatever you tell yourself, the fact is, you’re pretty damned excited. Tempted to think you are responsible. Tempted to think one jump of your pulse makes you guilty and responsible. So then you are obliged … to someone so beautiful and honest. Now I don’t know how honest it was. I guess I insulted her this morning.”

His wife said soberly, “I’ll bet you did.”

He said, vaguely surprised, “You do?”

But she veered. “Did you fix the trouble?”

“What trouble?”

“The trouble at the Falls?”

“Of course,” he said, astonished. She smiled. “What are you smiling at?”

“At what I know about you,” she murmured.

He turned toward her so sharply that his coat fell open. “Well …” she began in a brisk and practical tone. Then her hand darted. “Henry! What’s the matter with your arm?”

He caught her hand before it could touch the dirty bandage. “Nothing to fuss about, Libby. Accident. I kinda smashed up the car, last night.”

She looked at him in pure alarm. “Henry! Don’t ever not tell me! I can bear to know. Honest, I can! Henry, if I don’t know what’s going on, how can I be with you? It isn’t fair! Don’t smile! Henry!”

“I survived,” he said lightly. He was smiling.

Their eyes met. And, with a kind of click, something opened, something happened. The stiff line of his spine broke and began to relax. Into her mind, at the same time, poured a multitude of urgencies. He must wash. Celestina must be ready to serve his breakfast and he must eat it and go to bed. Must have Celestina make up the bed upstairs so the baby won’t disturb him. And they must have something light but nourishing, that can go on a tray, at noon. And for supper something heartier. There’s his suit to be cleaned and better order soap—it’s nearly out—and get in a laundress on account of the baby and, when the doctor comes, he must look at that arm.

She cried to herself, “This house is a mess!” The current of life roared through her head. “I must get at those chairs just as soon as I can. Oh, I’ll make and I’ll do. There’s the garden and a fenced place for the baby. He must be in the sun. Oh, I can’t lie around. There’s so much …”

“Better get on …” Henry sighed, and she nodded.

Cyril’s Ford climbed up, it ran along the wood’s edge, it passed with busy speed the Trezona house, it rattled down. It began to come into the town of Thor, and they could see the white Methodist Church on the corner.

“Cyril?”

“Yes.”

“What did he say?” Her face was pinched and rather angry.

“He’s got a son,” Cyril had heard this in the crowd.

“Oh,” she said, inflating, somehow. “That’s it, then.” Her face smoothed out.

Cyril wouldn’t say whether that was it. He would do his best not to repeat or remember what had been said.

“Why did you make that crack about our leaving town?” She roused herself to be belligerent.

“Because it’s true. You’re not going to hang around deviling Duncane, dear sister. I’m through here and you’ll go with me.”

“I don’t have to go with you,” she flared.

“Yes. You have to,” he snapped. “I’ve got money. You haven’t.”

He could tell that she winced. He was a little sorry for her, not that he loved her, but she was his, after all. “You’re through here, too,” he said more mildly. “Never were quite right here. Wrong foot, somehow.”

“This stupid town!” she said sullenly.

“We’ll get away,” he promised. “Cheer up. It’s not the whole world.”

Her shoulders wiggled.

They came to the town hall and turned up to the left. Nowhere to go but the little house. So they went into the alley, into the shack. They got out and came around to the front door. He had the key in his hand.

“This hut,” she said. “This God-forsaken stuffy little town! At least I’ll be free!” Stormy dreams in her eyes.

Cyril said soothingly, “Neither of us ever did fit in the patterns here.” He unlocked the door and she went in. But he stood on the narrow porch and looked down where the big trees swayed over the town’s heart. He feared he was wrong.

Because he could see (he saw too much!) how there might be, under the surface patterns, another. How a design, superimposed for show over the fabric, hides but cannot eliminate the real threads that really go in and out and, in simplicity and strength, are both a pattern and the cloth itself.

When the strain comes it is the weave that takes it.

Some of the people in Thor had something that kept them from breaking when the pull came and the stuff was tested, and others had not, they fell apart. In this pattern everyone fits, whether he likes it or no.

And the threads … his mind spun and he couldn’t stop it … the qualities, the ones that hold, are many and different. And yet, because they hold, they have a folk name. Oh come …

He caught himself beginning to sob in that silly emotional fashion, and he twitched. He sniffed. No need to make a fool of himself! He walked through the door and slammed it.

“We’re no good here,” he said harshly. “You get upstairs, go to sleep. You need it. You look like hell.” That moved her. He knew how to move her. Haggard and beautiful, she turned obediently toward the stairs. “I’m going to lie down myself. Head aches.”

“Cyril?”

“What?”

“How much money have you?” Her lovely face was thoughtful.

“Enough, don’t worry.” His voice was thin and full of reassuring scorn. But then he added, rather gently, because he had taught her—no one else had taught her anything—“You rest a while.”

He did not sound loving. He never did. He never would.

But she turned to look, briefly startled, where he stood with his palms pressed over his sight.

“That was a town?” the motorist said to his wife. “Say, where are we?”

“Thor,” she read on the map.

“Mining town.”

“What did you say?” The ore train roaring under as they crossed the bridge over the cut was thunderous.

“Said, nothing there. Mining town.”